Snow days in the South mean only one thing: no school.
While most people were outside enjoying the rare winter weather last week, John Winn, associate provost, was helping schedule make-up class days.
Last spring, Auburn was closed for one day because of snow. The make-up day was scheduled on the University's official reading day, the day before spring finals.
Winn said this year's decision was easy to make.
"Everything seemed to work very well last year. We didn't really receive any complaints, and so, you know, we just used that as our precedent, and we did it again this year," Winn said.
This year, Auburn scheduled two reading days for spring finals. These two days will now be set aside as make-up days for professors.
Although professors will have the option of reserving classrooms on the reading days, they are not required to hold a make-up class.
Alex Gallo, sophomore in business, said none of his professors held class on the reading day last spring.
"I remember that day being nothing but a lot of homework and the flash mob," he said.
According to Winn, only a small percentage of professors actually reserved classrooms last spring.
"Most of the faculty use alternative ways," he said. "You know, a lot of people are putting stuff online now; that's much more common than it was just a few years ago, and so really what we hear from a lot of faculty is that they're using these online options for posting different types of materials."
Kathryn Nickell, senior in horticulture, said she found out about this semester's make-up days through one of her professors. She said the professor had not decided whether he would be utilizing the make-up days.
It was only by coincidence that the number of scheduled reading days equaled the number of weather days. Winn said if there had been more weather days than reading days, alternate plans would have to be made.
"The general guideline is to try to avoid disrupting the students' plans as much as possible," Winn said. "And so what that would mean is, rather than using something like Spring Break, we would probably try to do something like using a Saturday that's during the semester."
The bottom line, however, is that weather-related closings are rare enough to not generally present a problem to the University.
"I've been associated with Auburn for many, many years," Winn said. "And in all I can only think of maybe five times we've had (weather-related closings), and two of those are the ones we just had."
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